


Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love, Weary on My Faithless Arm

by SylvanWitch



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: AU for DH, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 14:33:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twice they met in the Forbidden Forest.  Both times it was complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love, Weary on My Faithless Arm

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to RestrictedSection.org sometime in '04 or '05. One of my earliest HP stories. The title is from W.H. Auden's "Lullaby" (1937).

Two figures flickered through the deep shadows of the Forbidden Forest, the towering giants above them casting a canopy of gloom. One, bent double over the midriff, was clearly struggling to remain upright; the other, slightly ahead, seemed to be scouting for something, or listening; all that could be divined definitely under the cowled hood was that the figure was looking ahead. The bent figure to the rear began to falter, each step more visibly difficult than the one that had come before, until it stumbled into a tree and slid painfully to the ground, cradling one arm against its abdomen. The figure in the lead kept on a few paces and then stopped, looking back as though just having noticed that it was no longer followed. 

Hesitation resonated from the standing figure, one foot still partially forward, deeper into the Forest, the other foot turned half back, as if reconsidering the steps it had already taken. Even as the figure wavered, shadows lengthened, twilight falling to encroaching dark. It returned to the side of the fallen.

"Severus, no. You must go on."

"Minerva, please. No 'I'm fine, save yourself' Gryffindor heroics. There's really no point in running; it only means they'll catch me sooner rather than later if I stop here awhile. Besides, I'm weary."

Minerva McGonagall peered piercingly through the deepening dark to discern the features of the Potions Master's face. He did, indeed, look exhausted; no, he looked nearer death than she had ever seen him, and she had seen him on those most unfortunate occasions when he returned from one of Voldemort's torture sessions. But for Severus Snape to admit to weakness, and to her, of all people, meant that he did, indeed, need rest. She patted the ground next to her invitingly with one gnarled hand.

He settled next to her, finding a cradle in the roots of the great tree, and glanced inquiringly at her.

"And you?"

A man of few words at the best of times, the harried race through the Forest had driven all but the essential words from him now. Minerva almost chuckled but caught herself when she remembered how much that would hurt.

"Well, I've been better, but I've certainly been worse. I took a spill off a broom into the stands once, back in my day. Impaled myself on a support. What a mess! I thought Madam Comfrey (the medi-witch then) was going to kill me! 'You've no more sense than Merlin gave a hinkypunk, do you now, Minnie,' she'd said..." McGonagall trailed off, flushing slightly as she realized she'd been rambling.

Snape gave no indication that he'd been listening at all. His head propped back against the tree, exposing a long line of sweat-stained neck, he seemed fast asleep. She couldn't see well enough in the thickening dark to tell if his eyes were open or closed.

"Have I suddenly grown an extra eye, or have you just lost what few marbles you had remaining to you?"

Apparently open, she thought to herself.

"I was just wondering if you were asleep." She settled for the truth. 

An inelegant snort sounded from the darkness at her side. "Who could sleep with your thrilling tales firing his imagination?"

Minerva tried to glare, but pain caught her mid-expression, and she settled for a wince and a quick, indrawn breath, which proved to be the wrong thing entirely. Her abused ribs trumpeted their protest and her exhale was a tight hiss. 

Snape stirred and moved closer, reaching one hand out of the darkness to rest it on her right arm, which had been clasped to her stomach. "Let me see," he ordered. 

It was her turn to snort. "See?! Really, Severus, have you discovered some wandless, magical source of light in the last few minutes? Otherwise, there is no point in me baring my wound. It will only bleed more profusely, and I assure you that it's managing well enough at that as it is."

A string of softly spoken, vehement curses of the verbal, not magical, variety fell fluently from Snape's lips. "Curse the sperm that made Draco Malfoy and the gods that blessed his birth," he said, distinctly. 

Draco, in betraying Hogwarts, had had the remarkable foresight and, more surprisingly still, courage to organize a band of Slytherin sixth and seventh years, storm the faculty meeting, stupefy the staff, and steal their wands, mid-defensive curses. Of course, surprise was their advantage, Snape thought. None of us expected a frontal assault from within the castle walls led by students themselves. 

"We underestimated Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall observed, as though reading Snape's thoughts.

"Indeed we did. Not a mistake we'll likely live to rectify," he said, with his usual sneer.

"Severus, I must insist that you go on without me. You may still be able to find the centaurs and seek refuge with them. They'll defend you, Severus, when they hear that Hogwarts has fallen. There's still great good that you can do."

There was a heavy silence for long moments, and McGonagall held her breath, afraid that he would agree with her and leave her alone in the growing darkness and coming chill and equally fearing what would surely happen should he stay with her.

Finally, his voice came, a darkness ripped from the night itself, flowing around her, leaving a chill different from the one creeping up through her bones from the damp ground beneath her:

"It seems I've heard this speech before."

And then a chuckle, a deep laugh, a bassline walking up her spine.

She could not stop herself from inhaling audibly, so surprised was she that he would speak of the last occasion on which they'd been together in this forest. 

*****

It had been an early May night like this one, more than twenty years now, with a full moon, too, she recalled. Warmer, though, she thought, shifting uncomfortably as the chill increased. She had been on her way to a secret altar deep within the Forest for a Beltane ritual. She was dressed in a simple muslin robe, red for the fire festival and passion, bound with a flower chain about her waist. Her long hair was loose, held back by a rowan wreath, and she carried in one hand some boughs of the rowan tree, with which she intended to decorate the altar. She shivered slightly in the moving air, anticipation and trepidation rising and falling with her breath, with her heartbeat. She was to meet her Lord there, though she did not know who it would be, and they would give thanks to the earth and ask blessings of fertility for the coming season by offering their bodies to the Lady and Lord, to become the Lady and the Lord incarnate for those blazing moments of divine fulfillment. She quickened her pace, moving with unerring and catlike sureness through the dark woods, the light of the moon like a guiding beacon for the ritual to come.

To her left, off the path, came the sudden snapping of twigs, like the cracking of knuckles in the stillness of the deep woods. She paused, using her cat senses to scan the undergrowth. Though she could see nothing, she knew with a certainty borne of many years in feline form that she was being watched. She stood her ground, legs slightly apart, wand suddenly in her right hand, and said, "Show yourself, be you man or beast. I have business in these woods this Beltane, and you will not bar my way."

A laugh then, melodious but slightly. . .off. Invisible fingers skittered up her spine, and she shivered involuntarily. 

"Who is there? Show yourself!" she demanded again, more forcefully.

"Min—-er—-va!" sang the voice, pitched high at the end, unnatural and weird.

"If this is your idea of a joke, I find it offensive. I am on my way to a Beltane rite, charged with the blessings of the goddess. You cannot stop me." Her voice did not betray the growing uneasiness in her belly, and she began to inch backward off of the path to the side opposite the hidden creature, hoping to shelter in deep shadow.

Suddenly, as though sensing her strategy, a figure burst upward from the bushes in front of her, moving with a speech and efficiency of movement that startled her; for a moment, she was convinced that her accoster was a vampire, so fey and graceful was the speed with which it moved. 

He was before her before she could draw a breath to scream. Not that she would have, of course. She was a grown Witch, powerful in her own right and a teacher at Hogwarts, besides. None could easily harm her.

The moon, which had been flirtatiously moving in and out of a diaphanous and fast-moving cloud cover, chose that moment to burst free of its fetters and flood the path in light. Minerva was startled to recognize the figure before her:

"Severus? Severus Snape?!"

The young man seemed startled that she recognized him, and he took a half-step back, until he realized what he'd done and pushed forward two steps, pulling himself up to full height, pushing out his chest, and violating her personal space with nary an apparent qualm.

"Well, if it isn't ol' Minnie McGonagall." He sniggered. "Fancy meeting you here." He was twirling a sprig of rowan in one hand; the other was concealed in the folds of his robe.

"Severus Snape, what is the meaning of this?" She used her best teacher voice, the one that quailed even the most stalwart seventh year Gryffindor and left him shaking in his boots.

It did not appear to have that effect on Snape, who merely sniggered again, louder this time, almost a guffaw, in fact. As if in answer, he moved his left hand out of his robes and held up an object for her to see. 

It took a moment for her brain to make sense of what her eyes were seeing. At first, she had thought that it was a twisted stick, something scavenged from the forest floor, and she could not understand why he thought it was such a prize. Peering closer, however, she began to discern a viscous fluid running slowly down the object and falling in pendulous drops from the end. Suddenly, as though brought into focus by a magical mirror, she saw what the object was—an antler. More specifically, it was part of the ceremonial full stag's rack of antlers worn by the man who would have been manifesting the Lord in that night's Beltane ritual.

She covered her mouth, unable to look away, horror etched on every feature. She breathed out, "Severus, what have you done?"

That chilling, maniacal giggle again. 

Then, she saw that the antlers were shaking. Indeed, Snape's hand was shaking, and his arm, up through his shoulder; his whole body was one long, sinuous tremor, constant and convulsive. She tried to catch his eye, but he would not look at her, fixating instead on the steady drops of blood that fell faster, now, from the shaking rack in his hand.

"Severus Snape, you tell me this instant what you have done, or I will have no choice but to take you to the Headmaster!" She snapped at him, as though chastising an unruly child caught red-handed with the evidence of his misdeed.

Snape fastened those deep black orbs on her, expression glazed, unseeing. But he was listening, that much was clear. 

"Severus, tell me what you have done." It was not a question but a command, and he seemed to relax into her authority, his shoulders slumping, the gory prize falling with a sickening thud to the loamy ground at his feet. He seemed suddenly boneless, a collapsing marionette, and as quickly as he had burst from the bushes he was sitting on the ground, robes twisted about him, legs spread awkwardly and partially exposed. 

Minerva looked down at him for a moment and then moved to sit across the path from him, resting her back on a huge tree, nestling in the soft ground between two massive roots.

She waited, waited so long that she thought she could hear the sound of Beltane drums beating in the distance, until she realized that it was her own heart. Finally, when she thought she would have to repeat her question, a sepulchral voice, utterly devoid of all emotion, said,

"I killed him."

Nothing more. For horrified minutes, Minerva cataloged all the men in the castle who had been eligible and likely to stand in for the Lord in this night's feast. Not one face that she recalled could she bear to lose. 

"Who, Severus? Who did you kill?" she asked, hoarsely.

"Him," with a gesture in the direction of the fallen antlers.

"Severus," she began carefully, in the voice she reserved for getting information from a frightened child without panicking him, "Who was wearing the antlers?"

He looked at her then, perhaps for the first time that night truly seeing her. His eyes traveled over her loosened hair, the rowan wreath, the red robe, the flower belt, her bare feet. And then he laughed again, with a rising edge of hysteria, and said in a taunting child's voice, fit more for playground than this cursed path in the blistering dark,

"You—don't—know. You—don't—know. You—don't..." Minerva reached across the gap between them and slapped him hard across the face. On the recoil, his expression was once again blank.

"Enough!" Minerva commanded. This time, she saw him stiffen to attention. He was coming out of shock. "Who was wearing the antlers, Severus?" Her breath was caught in her throat. If he didn't speak soon she would surely die.

"Professor Ebenshade."

Minerva could not prevent a gasp from escaping her as she recognized the name of the tall, stately Potions Master, who had been her elder by many years but whom she had known and respected and liked. She stifled the urge to sob, forcing her heart back down her throat and swallowing hard.

"Why did you kill him, Severus?" she asked, trying, despite her growing rage, to keep her voice gentle.

"We were told that we must," he said, simply. She stiffened at the "we" and realized suddenly her utter danger. 

"How many of you are there, Severus?" she asked, sharply now.

His eyes were suddenly glittering and knowing. "You're on the list, too," he hissed, sibilant and insidious. He began to gather his legs in a crouch, to move forward on his hands and knees, stalking her, more like a cat than a snake in that moment. She watched him approach, frozen in horror at the bloody left hand that reached out to her and the livid, glowing Dark Mark that had been concealed until that moment by his robe sleeve. 

When he was but a breath away from her, hand clawed as though to throttle her, she said, voice breathy with fear and something else, something more profound and far more disturbing—pity—

"Oh, Severus, what have you let them do to you?"

The bloodied hand clenched then and struck her, once, hard across her left cheek. Her head rocked back against the tree trunk, but she recovered quickly. She fought to keep herself from raising one hand to her face; it stung and then began to throb steadily, but she pushed the pain from her mind, and it helped to clear away the last vestiges of frozen horror. She gazed at the Death Eater before her, her eyes cold and utterly contemptuous now, no pity to be found. She spat once, with great deliberation, in his face.

When the spittle hit him, it seemed to bring Snape out of a trance, and he sat back a distance from her, then, and lifted an astonished hand to his wet face. Wiping it away, he looked at the trail of spit on his hand as though it had appeared there magically.

"You are no man, Severus Snape, nor a Slytherin. You have neither the courage to face your enemy in the daylight nor the conviction to admit to the company that you keep. You skulk in the dark, ashamed and afraid, and prey on the unsuspecting. You are a vulture, a carrion crow, and you stink of death and the perversion of those who live off the dead and dying. Shame be on you, Severus Snape, shame and woe all of your days." Her pronouncement had the formality of ancient proclamations, and he had yet enough grace left to look disturbed by her words.

The shaking began again, accompanied this time by a low keening in the back of his throat and the audible clash of grinding teeth. Minerva McGonagall knew trauma when she saw it, and the young man rocking convulsively before her had been deeply traumatized by something that night, though she doubted it had been by the murder he claimed to have commit. Intuitively, with the wisdom of long experience, she said,

"You killed no one this night, Mr. Snape. You may have been a party to it, but I do not believe that you are responsible for shedding the blood that stains your hands. Tell me what happened so that I may help you." Her voice was all reason, as though they were facing one another over her desk at teatime and trying to work out a conflict in his class schedule.

"I--," he began. He took a breath and tried again. "The—they told me that I had to come. I wasn't supposed to have to come. It wasn't time for me, they said. Luc promised me that it wasn't time yet, that I was only supposed to wait at the edge of the forest for the actual Revel to begin and then he would come and bring me to the fire." He broke off again, lost in the recent past.

"But they made you come into the forest, didn't they, Severus?" she prodded gently, sensing how close he was to breaking.

"Ye—Ye—Yes." He nodded vigorously, like a child affirming some fearful fact. He gulped air noisily. Then, slightly more calmly, looking at her, now, though with furtive, rapid glances to the left and right of her eyes, "I tried to stay away from him. I tried. He was in the circle, near the altar, and Luc pushed me into the light and he said who are you and I said run run run but he wouldn't run he looked confused he wasn't afraid enough and I said run and Luc came out of the woods behind me and shoved me, hard, and I stumbled into the man and he fell back and hit his head on the altar—and—and—and—" his voice died and a wail came up out of him, anguished and unrestrained, and he was crying then, choking on his tears, retching them up like poison from his belly. 

Minerva would have had to have been a far colder woman than she was to let the young man shake himself to pieces with grief, and she gathered him up in her arms, pulling him toward her so that he sat cradled between her legs, his head against her chest, beneath her chin. She rested her cheek against his hair and began the universal and eternal soothing that mothers give the motherless, rubbing his back in small circles and whispering ridiculous words that were nothing but lies. He would not be fine. Things would not be all right. Marcus Ebenshade was dead.

After an eternity of agonizing moments, when the night had witnessed all the grief that any could bear, Snape stilled, as though just then realizing where he was and with whom. He pulled back from her, awkward now, all elbows and knees, suddenly years younger than he had ever been before in her presence.

His silky voice, roughened at the edges from sobbing, came hesitantly, shyly, “What will happen to me now?" To his credit, it was not a plea for mercy. He expected Azkaban. She could hear the Dementor-driven despair in each measured word.

She drew in her own shaky breath. "I do not know, Severus. It was an accident; you did not come to that circle intending harm. You tried to help him. You were merely the instrument of an evil man. Lucius Malfoy, however, though your peer, is far your superior in wealth and influence. He will not hang for this crime, Severus, and you can be sure that he will try to hang you in his stead. Furthermore, you took the Dark Mark of your own free will, and that alone is grounds for imprisonment."

"Then I am damned either way," and there was something of the old Snape in his tone, then, an anger at the world for its unfairness to him and a bitter acknowledgment that he supposed it must be what he deserved, since it was all, indeed, life had ever granted him. "If I return to the Dark Lord, he will punish me. If I am lucky, he will kill me outright. If not, it will come to this again on some other night very soon, and I will have no choice but to pass that test. If I return to Hogwarts with you, I will be tried as a Death Eater and sent to Azkaban." He shook his head, a rueful almost-smile ghosting over his lips and then gone, the sardonic ember of his eyes dulling, too. "No. I have made my choice already," and he gestured to his left forearm. "I will live with that choice." He began to rise. 

McGonagall stopped him cold with words alone, "You will stay where you are, Severus Snape, until you are dismissed!"

He froze, suddenly rigid, caught between indignation and trepidation.

"Is this all that you have learned from your years at Hogwarts? That there are but two solutions to every problem and both must be equally bad? Have you learned nothing from studying potions? Alter a potion by a milligram of distilled toad's bile or a dusting of moth's wings and what happens? What happens, Mr. Snape?" She would have an answer this instant, young man.

"It can change the fundamental properties of the potion," he intoned, obviously from memory. In fact, it came from a lecture Severus had heard not that many years ago, delivered by the man whom he had killed that night. It struck him with the force of a Killing Curse, and he began once more to shudder.

She stilled him with a hand on his chin, pulling his head around until her eyes became an anchor and he focused. 

"Yes, Mr. Snape. Life is a potion; there are infinite variables for creating infinite outcomes. Sometimes one cannot predict what that outcome might be; one word more or less might mean the difference between damnation and salvation. Potions Masters experiment for years with toad's bile and moth's wings before satisfied that they have produced the best potion for its purpose. You can do the same with your life, here tonight. You can stop predicting outcomes and start living your life as though you have a choice of what goes into it and what you'll get out of it. There's still great good that you can do. Do you understand?"

He had been staring at her throughout her speech, and he did not stop when she asked him her question, merely nodding his head ever so slightly in the cup of her palm against his chin. She seemed to realize then how intimately they were connected, for she started to draw her hand away. He stopped her, pressing his own hand up against the back of hers, cradling it to him, shifting his face in her grip so that she caressed, instead, his cheek. 

Her forearm stiffened and she tried to pull away. He protested, something primitive and deep in his throat, but loosed her hand and dropped his head. He was mortified at his weakness.

Long awkward moments, stillness so profound one could hear the sighing of a sleeping bird somewhere far above them in the tree overhead.

Then a touch again to his cheek, something hesitant and searching, both. He looked up, self-loathing, fear, and hope warring on his face. She sighed softly,

"Has no one ever loved you, Severus?"

He shook his head, looking down again, more deeply ashamed than he had ever been in his life. 

A hand caressed his cheek again.

"Not even your mum? I mean, no one has ever touched you, have they? Not with love of any kind." The last a statement, not a question, and he did not respond, even to nod or shake his head.

Her caress became more definite, and he looked up searchingly again, this time with obvious fear. A question formed on his lips, but she put a finger there to forestall it. Shaking her head, she said only, "Say nothing. Nothing." Lost, confused, terrified beyond words at the horror he had provoked that night, he could merely agree. He did not have it in him to question anymore, nor did he especially want to as he sensed her moving closer, leaning forward to draw him to her. A chaste kiss fell on his lips, and she intoned, 

"The Lady to her Lord is come this night.  
All hail the Goddess and the God." 

She said no more; she would not blaspheme on this holy night. But she had wanted Severus to understand her motivations. This was the night on which the whole earth celebrated the renewal of life. It was the night on which all life became possible, with the Lord and Lady consummating their love and conceiving the boy who would become the God again, renewing the eternal cycle of birth-life-death-rebirth. And as she had explained to the young man before her life was about choice, about how even the most subtle of choices could change the course of history. She chose to give him this to remind him how worthy life could be, how joyous, blessed, and holy. She would not tell him what he must do, but she could give him something against which to balance the nightmare of the Dark Path he had chosen.

She kissed him again, more passionately, her tongue teasing at his lower lip until he parted his lips and welcomed her inside his mouth with an astonished half-gasp of mingled surprise and pleasure. She smiled against him, their joined mouths quirking up, and then deepened the kiss further still, until she was stroking his tongue with steady lashes and he was moaning low and steady, a baritone hum she could feel in her back teeth.

He moved against her tentatively, then, without breaking the kiss drawing up on his knees, she mirroring his movement until they were chest to chest, he above her, tongues still sliding slickly. He felt her hands on his robe, and he moved as though to pull away, but she swatted his chest playfully and deepened her exploration of his mouth, running her tongue between his lips and his gums, and biting his lower lip, suckling it, so that he forgot his intentions. She unbuttoned his robe slowly, inch by careful inch baring him to her touch. He was wearing no shirt beneath the robe, she noted curiously, but she was far too preoccupied with the gleam of his white skin to bother asking him about his state of half-dress. When she brushed across his nipple, he arched and pulled away from her mouth, throwing his head back and groaning, louder now and more insistent. His own hands moved to divest her of her dress, and she stood above him to undo the flower belt and drop the red muslin from her shoulders. She was bare beneath it, naturally. She had been on her way to a fertility festival, after all. 

He gazed up at her, breathless, mouth open slightly with amazement. A dawning light of joy came into his eyes, and then something deeper, darker, an appreciation that was utterly masculine. He nuzzled against her stomach, wrapping his long forearms around her waist, his long fingers downward, caressing the top of her buttocks. She sighed into him, against him, said, "Oh," a soft, drawn-out murmuring. They stayed like that for a long moment, and then she touched his bare shoulders with her small hands, indicating that he should rise. As he did so, his loosened robe slithered around him and pooled at his feet. He stepped out of it, and out of his shoes, socks, and the loose trousers he'd been wearing beneath his robe. He wore nothing under the trousers, and it was her turn to smile appreciatively, an utterly feminine smile of approval.

They moved together then, still standing, the moment of skin on skin overwhelming Snape, who had never been with anyone like this before. His breath came ragged and harsh; he was panting with need, though as yet they were only standing and looking at one another. She was not so much shorter than him that it made the gaze uncomfortable to hold, so they did so for long moments, until he had controlled his breathing. Then, taking his robe and hers and laying them out on the ground at the base of the tree, in the cradle of its roots, Minerva McGonagall took Severus Snape's hand, reclined, and drew him down to lay atop her.

In the shelter of the great roots, the air was loamy with decaying leaves and greening earth. A faint wind soughed in the branches high above them, and their combined breaths added to the night's chorus. McGonagall heard the Beltane drumming of her heart again and moved against Snape, rocking her hips gently to get his attention. He kissed her and then, by ancient instinct, rained kisses down her throat, stopping to tease and nibble at the spot that made her moan then drawing a line of fire down to the pillow of her breasts, where he suckled first one nipple and then the other, until she was writhing and moaning beneath him. "Oh," she murmured again, approval and pleasure apparent in her voice. He smiled against one nipple, gave it a teasing nip, and then moved down to lave a long, wet path along her belly. She stopped him at her mons, dragging him up by the hair to face her. She shook her head once, smiling gently. 

"I want you now," she said, simply, reaching down between them to run a hand along his shaft, to feel its silky iron smoothness against her palm. Her smile widened, admiring, and he blushed at her appraisal. She rocked her hips up again, more deliberately than before, and he understood without being told. She raised her knees to accommodate him there between her thighs and then helped to guide him into her. He slid into her with a gasp, going utterly still as he felt the warm hot wetness of her surrounding him. She rocked against him once more, and he stared down at her, a look of profound wonder on his face as he felt that age-old rhythm for the first time in his life. She returned his smile with one of her own, and they fell together into the rocking, gentle motion.

They joined together for what seemed like hours, until their gentle motion became more forceful, until each was panting and crying out, licking sweat-dampened skin wherever each could reach it, feeling the hot friction of their lovemaking building to a peak. Severus groaned what might have been her name as he drove into her, thrusting now with abandon, caught up in the motion and driven into greater heights of pleasure by her own cries beneath him. "Yes," she cried, "Oh, yes! Severus! Oh, Severus! Come with me, come with me..." He obeyed, feeling the shining bubble of his orgasm widen and then burst with dizzying force, feeling her inner muscles contract around him as she joined him in that place of white hot pleasure joy bliss freedom.

The next morning, when Minerva awoke, Severus was gone. By her side was a conjured parchment scroll, which she unrolled and read through blinding tears. 

_Dearest Minerva (it is the first time I have, and probably the last time I will ever, call you that):_

_Thank you._

_I have made my choice, though it may not be the one you had hoped. Please do not think that your lesson has gone unheeded, but there are some things we do that forever change us. Taking the Dark Mark was one of these. Last night, both before and after, was another. If I am ever to do good in this world, I must first learn the heart of evil, for that was another lesson I took from Professor Ebenshade. One cannot make any potion without first learning about the properties of its basic solution._

_I will never speak to you again of this night, and I am sure that you would have it thus, too. We are far too pragmatic to believe that it was love, and far too foolish to hope that it was not._

_Blessed Beltane,_

_S.S._

 

Minerva rolled the parchment, set it aside, and rose to her feet, gathering about her the dress that had been draped over her while she slept. She dressed quickly, turned her wand to the parchment, muttered, "Incendio," and watched it burn, the tears dammed in her eyes now blinked furiously away. She turned towards the path she had left last night and moved again towards the waiting altar. She had a different ritual to complete.

*****

Severus shifted against the tree roots, his exhausted muscles protesting their hard rest. He tried to make out Minerva's expression in the dark. She had been about to say something in reply to his remark, and he admitted to having some curiosity about how she would handle his having ventured onto forbidden ground. Just then, the full moon broke above the treeline, and Severus realized that Minerva was gone. "This time you left me," he said, sadly, reaching over to close her cold, staring eyes. As he completed the gentle ministration, he heard the first werewolf cry pierce the night, at some distance, and then, much closer, an answering call. 

"I am right behind you, dearest Minerva," he said, and then lay his head on her breast, under her chin, and closed his eyes.


End file.
